... Award Presentation to be Made at Annual AAPD Leadership Gala March...WASHINGTON Dec. 19 -- The American Associatio...The Henry B. Betts Award is named in honor of Henry B. Betts M.D. a... Eric Rosenthal has helped to galvanize international attention to the...

Award Presentation to be Made at Annual AAPD Leadership Gala March 5,
2008, National Building Museum, Washington, DC

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Association
of People with Disabilities (AAPD) announces that the prestigious 2008
Henry B. Betts Award will be presented to Eric Rosenthal for pioneering the
field of international human rights advocacy for people with disabilities
and bringing unprecedented international awareness to their concerns. He
established and is Executive Director of Mental Disability Rights
International (MDRI). Through MDRI, Rosenthal has investigated human rights
conditions in 23 countries. He has trained and supported the work of
disability activists around the world to fight these abuses.

The Henry B. Betts Award is named in honor of Henry B. Betts, M.D., a
pioneer in the field of rehabilitation medicine who started his career with
the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago in 1964, making it the base for his
career as an advocate for people with physical disabilities and leader in
the field of rehabilitation medicine, and who has devoted himself to
improving the quality of life for people with disabilities. The award
program was created in 1989 and is funded by the Prince Charitable Trusts.

"Eric Rosenthal has helped to galvanize international attention to the
human rights violations that people with significant disabilities are
subjected to every day," says AAPD President and CEO Andrew J. Imparato.
"His vision, passion, strategic advocacy, and belief in self-determination
and human dignity are changing policies and changing lives in a disability
movement that is increasingly connected across the globe."

Rosenthal grew up with manic depression in his family. He was
interested in psychiatry when he entered college, but after working in a
psychiatric ward became uncomfortable with the coercion he observed. After
law school he went to Mexico to document abuses against indigenous people.
He observed the dehumanization of people held naked and in filth in
psychiatric facilities and brought this to the attention of international
human rights groups, who were uninterested. In response, Rosenthal
established Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) in 1993.

MDRI's reports have been the first to bring widespread recognition that
the discrimination and abuse of people with disabilities constitutes a
violation of international human rights law. The United Nations recently
adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in no
small part due to Rosenthal's role promoting disability rights as human
rights.

In Uruguay, Hungary, Russia, Armenia, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Turkey,
Romania, Argentina, and most recently, Serbia, MDRI has drawn international
attention to horrendous conditions, helped change government policies, and
supported grassroots organizing around disability rights. Rosenthal
documents and effectively fights human rights abuses, and has won
precedent-setting legal victories before international tribunals and
brought support to people with mental disabilities to fight for their own
rights in these and more than 23 countries. In Paraguay, for instance, MDRI
won a decision from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordering
the release of two boys with autism held naked in isolation cells for
years, and Paraguay entered into a settlement with MDRI to
deinstitutionalize its national mental health system. Through the
leadership of MDRI's Associate Director, Laurie Ahern, MDRI is working with
the President of Kosovo to close Shtime Institution, Kosovo's psychiatric
facility, and create a community support system built on the leadership of
local disability activists. This model reform would make Kosovo the first
region in Central/Eastern Europe to end the segregation of people with
mental disabilities.

"Eric Rosenthal's work has been revolutionary," says Alison A. Hillman
de Velasquez, Director of Americas Program at MDRI. "He has labored
tirelessly for the recognition and enforcement of the rights of arguably
the most marginalized and stigmatized population of persons with
disabilities, persons with psychiatric diagnoses and intellectual
disabilities, and for the recognition of the rights of persons with
disabilities as human rights."

The 2008 Henry B. Betts Award will be presented collaboratively by AAPD
and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago at the 2008 AAPD Leadership
Gala, an awards ceremony and dinner, on March 5, 2008, at the National
Building Museum in Washington, DC. For additional information about this
event, visit the AAPD website: http://www.aapd.com, or call AAPD at 202-457-0046
(V/TTY).

The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the
country's largest cross-disability membership organization, organizes the
disability community to be a powerful voice for change - economically,
politically, and socially. AAPD was founded in 1995 to help unite the
diverse community of people with disabilities, including their family,
friends and supporters, and to be a national voice for change in
implementing the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To
learn more, visit the AAPD website: http://www.aapd.com.

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